Monday, March 31, 2014

Introducing Carbon Footprint Wines!

In one of the comments left on this Best of HoseMaster™ piece, a common tater expressed his happiness that the blog world was finally moving on from all the talk about Natural Wines. This was in August of 2010. So much for that. I don't remember the inspiration, if you can call it that, for this piece, but it certainly must have been a reaction to all the relentless hooey the wine marketing world spews about its contribution to the health of the planet. Much of which we believe without questioning because it makes us feel better about our drinking habits. I thought it might be refreshing to hear from a winery that, like so many drunks, just doesn't give a crap. From August of 2010, here's "Introducing Carbon Footprint Wines!"

It certainly seems
like every winery on the planet is jumping on the Green band wagon in an
effort to sell wine. Organic, BioDynamic, Vegan, Techron, OxyContin,
Martinized, Fleet--these are the words now commonly found on bottles of
wine and in winery marketing brochures. All in an effort to convince
wine buyers that not only will the wine get you trashed, but you can get
stinko with a clean conscience. And, really, it takes so little effort
on the consumer's part, requires virtually nothing except you believe
what it says on the bottle, and you can spend all evening congratulating
yourself that you've done your part to save the environment. Not like
the BioDynamic winemaker who's flying off to South America, as he does
several times a year, after Harvest to consult, and help make their
vineyards "green." Luckily, United Airlines uses BioDynamic jet fuel.
And it's not like you have to drive a fuel-efficient car, for God's
sake, that's insane. Every 105 lb. woman needs to drive a four-ton SUV.
For safety, dammit! But I shop at the farmer's market, and my wine is
made by BioDynamic monks who never kill European grapevine moths,
they just capture them, thank them in French for their love of
vineyards, and release them in their neighbor's non-organic vineyard
where they'll be Dow-chemicaled to death. It's a win-win.However, I have recently come across one winery that is bucking the Green trend, a winery following its own unenlightened path.

CARBON FOOTPRINT WINES

Our
motto at Carbon Footprint Wines is "A bigger footprint gets us closer
to our destination." We believe that climate change is real and
unstoppable. And while others see this as a negative, we see it as an
opportunity. An opportunity to speed up climate change, get this whole
thing over with, end the suspense and get right down to extinction.
We're not killing the whole planet; Nature will survive, it always does,
we're just killing off ourselves, the human race, an entirely worthy
goal. When you open a bottle of our Carbon Footprint wines you can rest
assured that we've done everything possible to not only make the wine
delicious and satisfying, but we've also done everything we can to have
degraded our natural resources and contribute to greenhouse gases. You
have our word.

In order to
produce the finest wines possible, grapes need to have the least
competition possible. Every insect or weed, every living thing in the
vineyard, detracts from the vines. This is simple scientific fact. At
Carbon Footprint, we spray every single available herbicide, pesticide
and fungicide over and over again until the only living thing in the
vineyard is the grapevine. We've even contracted with the state of
Arizona to have them ship us their suspected illegal immigrants to work
in our vineyards where they spray without the benefit of masks and
hazardous gear and soon cease to be a problem. The result? Award-winning
Cabernet! Yes, Senator John McCain has given us an Arizona Medal of
Freedom for our 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon "Wetback Reserve."

And
that's not all we do here at Carbon Footprint Wines. We make sure and
plant on our steepest hillsides for the best soil erosion results,
leeching lots of chemicals into our local streams and ridding them of
annoying piscine pests. Hillside vines make for fabulous Carbon
Footprint Zinfandel, which sucks with fish anyway. And we recently
dynamited our caves and built a gigantic air-conditioned warehouse so
that you can be certain that every bottle of Carbon Footprint Chardonnay
will be in perfect condition after its stay in our electricity-guzzling
storage facility. And, luckily, the cave was where so many of our
Arizona friends were living!

Naturally,
every bottle of Carbon Footprint wine weighs several pounds. Many
people will believe that we use a freakishly heavy bottle for marketing
purposes, to try and make our wines seem more serious, more valuable.
But that's not the case. We use heavy bottles to drive up the
consumption of fuel in the various vehicles used to deliver it, and, of
course, to prove we have a bigger penis than anyone in the wine
business. Just try to pick up a bottle of Carbon Footprint "Adios Coho"
Zinfandel with one hand! Don't hurt yourself! It's a Hernia in a Glass.
In God We Truss! A case of these babies weighs more than your ego-, oh,
sorry, eco-friendly Prius. It has a bottom you can fit a cake in. A
Bundt punt. But, please, we're begging you, don't recycle it. Why not
just toss it through your neighbor's solar panels? We
do hope you choose Carbon Footprint wines to serve to your friends and
family. We're destroying the earth so you don't have to.

Here are some recent reviews from notable wine bloggers:

"The
Carbon Footprint 2007 "Polar Burial" Sauvignon Blanc is really, really
good and shows the grape's typical aromas of gunpowder, nasal spray and
RAID! It's brilliant! The music to go with it is Baby Got Back by Sir Mixalot." This sample was provided by the winery in the knowledge that I would praise it. --Wine Hurl Lots

"A
complete surprise to me was the quality of the 2007 Carbon Footprint
"What Glaciers?" Merlot. I know Merlot isn't the most popular drink
right now, but this is far and away the nicest Merlot I've drunk through
a straw (I couldn't lift the bottle) in months!" --Chaim Steveoff

"For
the 2008 Carbon Footprint "Tribute to Roundup" Pinot Noir is farewell
in a bottle. Farewell to my ancestors, upon whose shoulders I stood,
before dandruff shampoo. Farewell to the beauty of the Adriatic, the
bounty of the sea denuded and destroyed and delicious. Farewell to the
stories of the old masters whose wisdom has been ignored in the making
of this wine, a fine Pinot Noir that may almost be worth the degradation
of this perilous planet we call home for now, but not for long.
Farewell to the meals shared with grateful wineries who call me Jupiter.
Farewell." --On the Wine Trail in Flipflops

10 comments:

At last a winery that does not disguise its true intentions behind a pretense of pro-nature blather. Humans have always been best at destruction. What do children like best--building or stomping in glee while destroying the very castle they just built? We age a great Bordeaux or Cabernet for 20 years just to down in in an hour. rdmill

Hey Bob,I've always been a bit fond of Carbon Footprint wines, though not as much as I'm fond of Splooge Estate. I contend that the rise of "natural" and "organic" wines is typical human fecklessness--we ruin the planet, and then we want wines to drink that make us feel less guilty of what a piece of crap planet we're leaving behind.

Dean,I AM standing up. Sucks being short.

My Gorgeous Samantha,Thanks, Love. At least the reruns give me a breather from all the comments. But I'm always excited to have you around to fondle. Or fondlier. Or whatever.

Gabe,Thanks, and you're right, one should drink Carbon Footprint wines with endangered species. Though I eat a lot of crow, and it won't help with that.

David,I'll try to keep up the good work, but it gets tougher and tougher to find a reason to continue aside from sheer stubbornness and stupidity--of which I have plenty. Thanks for being a common tater.

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After 19 years as a Sommelier in Los Angeles, twice named Sommelier of the Year by the Southern California Restaurant Writers' Association, I moved to Sonoma County to explore the other aspects of the wine business. I've spent, OK wasted, 35 years learning about and teaching about and swallowing wine. I am also a judge at the Sonoma Harvest Fair, San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition and the San Francisco International Wine Competition--so I can spit like a rabid llama. I know more about wine than David Sedaris and I'm funnier than James Laube. Stay tuned for an informed but jaded view of everything wine and everything else.
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